


An Inch

by RedGold



Series: Sixty-Three Thousand and Three Hundred and Sixty Inches [1]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Blood, Depression, Everything is awful, F/M, PTSD, Passively Suicidal, Postpartum Depression, References to murder-suicide, Sao Paulo, Suicidal Thoughts, bullet wounds, death of a child, no actual infidelity, references to possible infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 07:26:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20305681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedGold/pseuds/RedGold
Summary: An alternate version of the night the Flynn family was attacked. This time, Lorena survives the encounter with Flynn, but their daughter does not. The next three weeks is nothing but pain, misery, and alcohol.So when they're given hope that they could save their daughter, what will it cost them?





	An Inch

**Author's Note:**

> Please read the content tags! This is quite possibly the darkest thing I've ever written. I don't pull a lot of punches and everything is awful. Flynn and Lorena just had their daughter murdered and it's canon that he was suicidal when Lucy finds him in Sao Paulo. 
> 
> There is absolutely zero fluff in this.

**An Inch**

At this age, if you gave a kid an inch, they would take a mile.

The Thanksgiving Holiday was over, and Iris had gotten a little spoiled, staying up late and playing, or being read to. She had suckered Flynn two nights in a row. But no, she was going to bed on time tonight, no exceptions. 

“You hear that?” Lorena mumbled beside him.

“Hear what?” Flynn had his head stuffed in his pillow. 

“I think I heard Iris coughing,” she said as she pushed back the cover. “The Peterson’s kid had a cold last week. I hope she didn’t catch it.”

He mumbled something back to her—he wouldn’t remember what it was—and turned onto his other side. Exactly a minute and six seconds later, he bolted up out of his bed as he heard the first of two ‘silenced’ shots. 

Flynn yanked open the drawer of his bedside table. In the past, he would have just kept his gun out, but not with a child in the house. A quick thumb print on the lock, the door of the gun safe popped open. Within three seconds of hearing the second shot, Flynn was barreling out the bedroom, gun at the ready.

There was a man in the hallway wearing tactical armor and holding a silenced 9mm. Flynn reacted immediately, not even questioning his decision as he unloaded two rounds into the flak vest to stun the man. Then Flynn could spare a breath to take proper arm and shoot him in the face, well, he hit the neck. It didn’t matter, the man was down, immediate threat removed.

Continuing down the short hall, he took the corner with caution. 

“Lorena!” he shouted as he saw her on the floor, trying to prop herself up against the wall. She was holding her side, blood seeping across her nightshirt. 

“Garcia,” the word came out broken.

He rushed forward and was about to squat down to check on her when she looked up at him. Never before had he seen her eyes so pained. “Iris…”

Detouring from Lorena, he ran into Iris’ bedroom, only to stop a few feet in. 

Oh god, he was going to throw up. 

Torn between wanting to rush forward even though there was nothing he could do for his daughter, and wanting to run away from the truth before him, Flynn stood immobilized in his helplessness. Who... who could… she was _five years old_…

“Garcia!” Lorena shouted and his instincts took over. Rushing back into the hallway, another armed man had appeared. 

Flynn wanted to feel grief, but he’d settle for rage. 

Unloading his weapon on the man was a tactical mistake, for sure, but Flynn didn’t give a shit. He’d already killed the one who had pulled the trigger on his daughter, so his compatriot would just have to make up the deficit of pain he wanted to inflict.

The dead men’s radios started to squawk, asking for an update. They had to get out. More were coming.

After taking the man’s gun, he ran back to Lorena. She was still holding onto her side, skin a bit clammy, her breathing shallow. 

“We have to leave. Can you move?” He’d carry her if he had to, but it would leave them with less defense.

“Yeah,” she replied weakly and swallowed hard. “Help me up.”

Getting Lorena to her feet, he took point and led them across the house to the door to the garage. He could hear people entering from the back of the house, but the garage was empty. He locked the garage door behind them. It wouldn’t hold once the others realized they were in there. 

“Get in,” he told her as he grabbed the spare key to the SUV. 

Lorena crawled into the back, laying down and not bothering to buckle up as she sprawled across the seat. She had grabbed a clean dishtowel from the kitchen on the way through and was holding pressure on her wound.

Starting up the vehicle, he now only had seconds as he’d just given away their location. He pushed the garage door opener. It wasn’t even fully open before he slammed into reverse and tore down his driveway. He might have clipped a few men, which was a shame, he’d rather have hit them straight on.

Flying down the road at top speed, he needed to figure out his next move.

“Lorena, honey, do you need a hospital?” He’d go if he needed to, but if the men who had attacked them where willing to shoot a five-year-old girl—that can’t have happened, that can’t have been real—then a hospital probably wasn’t safe.

“It’s not bad,” she told him, her voice strained but he could tell it wasn’t a lie. “Bullet passed through, but I need to stop the bleeding.”

“Okay.” Mind racing a mile a minute as he flew down the side streets, there was only one place he could go. 

His security firm had several safehouses across the US and Europe, but there was one, locally, only known to him and Stiv. It wasn’t on any documents that the people going after him could stumble across. But just in case, he abandoned the SUV and stole another car, something that wouldn’t be reported for a while.

The safehouse was sparse, but it was meant for moments like this. Well, he always assumed it would be a client he was protecting, not himself and his wife after…

“I’ll get the medical kit,” he said as he helped Lorena sit down at the kitchen table. 

Flynn can’t remember why he put the kit in the bathroom, but he was thankful that he did. He threw open the toilet seat and wretched until his throat burned. 

If he had been alone, he would have stayed there, collapsed into a heap, but Lorena was still bleeding and needed first aid. Grabbing the kit, he went back into the kitchen. If Lorena had heard him throwing up, she showed no sign of judging him. 

Sitting the kit on the table, he got to work. The wound wasn’t that bad. Left untreated she would likely have bled out, but there was no risk of that now.

“An inch to the left and I’d be a goner,” she said as Flynn was cleaning out the wound. It was probably meant to come out darkly humored, but reality was too visceral for anything less than stuttered pain.

At one point, he got the burner phone he stashed in the safehouse and sent a text to one of Stiv’s burners. An hour later, the man showed up with a cooler, B-positive blood packets inside. Flynn didn’t know how the man was always able to get ahold of pretty much anything, and frankly, he was okay with that.

Lorena was stitched up. I wasn’t pretty, but it was effective. She was moved to the sofa so she could recline as the transfusion was set up. He noticed she had gotten quieter, her eyes more distance, over the past hour. Shock was settling in. He could feel it creeping up on him, but he unfortunately had a lot more experience dealing with it.

“What happened?” Stiv asked after pulling Flynn back into the kitchen. 

Flynn could barely get the words out because he knew eventually he would have to say his daughter was dead, she was _murdered,_ and he could do nothing to save her. Somehow, he got through the story. He might have taken several long pauses, but Stiv was patient with him. 

Iris always called him Uncle Stiv, and the man took the title seriously. He would do anything to help. 

It was getting late, or early, however you wanted to look at it. The transfusion was finished, Lorena looking a little more pink in the face. But her night clothes were covered in blood, and so was she. He needed to get her out of them, get the blood off, or else it would seep into her bones.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he said softly as he nudged her back to the present, away from whatever dark thought she had fixated on. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Flynn hadn’t bandaged the wound yet, wanting to keep an eye on it and to avoid an infection getting trapped in it. He’d disinfect it after the shower, then patch it before they went to sleep. If they could get to sleep. Exhaustion might be the only way he’d ever be able to close his eyes again.

Setting the shower running so it could warm up, he helped Lorena rid herself of the bloody clothing. It was only then that he realized Lorena was in the room when Iris was shot. There had been a streak of blood across the floor, a detail he hadn’t really thought of at the time, all things considered. It had been from Lorena trying to get out, get help. 

Some of this blood must have been their daughter’s.

Now he knew what distant place Lorena seemed to go as her eyes remained unfocused.

Once they were both unclothed, the bloody fabric tossed into a plastic trash bag, he gently urged Lorena under the showerhead. There was blood almost everywhere, so he started with her hair. She was only as responsive as he needed her to be as he moved her around to wash the blood away. The red pooled at their feet before disappearing down the drain.

There was no way they were going to get rid of it all. It was etched into their skin now. 

“Garcia?” she says his name as a question, but he doesn’t know what it is.

“_Srećo,_” he says softly, using his pet name for her. It means ‘my luck’ because, well, he felt lucky to have found her, for her to love him, and to be able to spend his life with her.

It was meant to bring her some small measure of comfort. It was a mistake. 

Lorena trembled, bringing her hands to her face before breaking into sob that descended into a wail. Her whole body started to shake and wrack. Flynn wrapped his arms around her, holding tight as if he could hold her soul together. But she cried until the water ran cold and her eyes could produce no more tears. 

He managed to get her wrapped into a robe before she passed out on him. He laid her on the bed, tucked a blanket around her, and then went into the kitchen. He found a bottle of whiskey that either Stiv had brought or had been left over from the previous time he had to use the safehouse.

It was empty by morning and he didn’t remember drinking it, though he could sure taste the liquor at the back of his throat.

Stiv had come back at eight am, supplies in hand. “Have you checked the news?”

He hadn’t because he had been mostly staring into a blank space for god knows how long. The shock had finally hit him. His daughter was dead… gone… murdered… would never grow up… would never smile again… she was murdered because… because why?

She was a _child_… 

“We now go to our correspondent, Jake Winters, who has more on this story,” the news anchor said as the camera switched to a live feed. The reporter, probably fresh out of journalism school, was standing almost, but not quite, in front of the Flynn residence. Cop cars and police tape kept him at a distance.

“Tragedy has rocked this small suburban neighborhood,” Winters starts. “Last night neighbors reported hearing gun shots coming from the home behind me. We’ve learned that the homeowners are Garcia Flynn, his wife Lorena, and their five-year-old daughter. What we’ve heard from police is that sadly, the girl was found dead, shot, when police arrived. At the moment, it looks like an attempted murder-suicide as the wife seems to have also been injured, but possibly survived. The family’s SUV was found a few miles away with blood in the backseat. Police fear it’s only a matter of time before they find the bodies of one or both parents.”

No mention of the hired gunmen that Flynn had shot on his way out? Why does this not surprise him?

The screen changed to show a detective giving a press conference outside the house. “The crime scene is still being processed but our initial theory is that this is an attempted murder-suicide. That Garcia Flynn shot his daughter and his wife. The girl died instantly but there is evidence Lorena Flynn survived for at least a short time. We can’t be sure at the moment why Garcia fled with her, but it’s possible he’s become mentally unstable.”

Flynn felt like he was going to throw up all over again, but there was nothing left in his stomach save the whiskey.

“Local police are asking citizens that if they see either Garcia or Lorena Flynn to call police, but not to approach Garcia as he is likely armed and unhinged,” the reporter continued. “Now, we’ve talked to neighbors and they are all quite shocked. Garcia Flynn is described as a man who doted on his wife and daughter, a good neighbor, and a generally good person. They also said Lorena Flynn was a loving wife, active in the local Catholic church. None of them can seem to believe this has happened.”

A moment later, their neighbor two doors down, came onto the screen. Mr. Wilkens was old, had trouble getting around these days. Flynn would mow his lawn for him every time he went out to do his own. 

“You couldn’t have met a nicer fella than Garcia Flynn,” Wilkens defended him. “Always ready to give a helping hand. And he absolutely loved his wife and daughter, even a blind man could see it. That girl of his was a mischievous little angel, and she was his whole world. No way could he have done this.”

That was one small comfort amid a mountain slide of glass shards pressing into his skin.

It went back to the reporter. “We’ve learned that both Garcia and Lorena are military veterans. There is concern that this could be some kind of post-traumatic break. We won’t know for sure until either of the Flynn’s are located.”

Flynn had heard enough and shut off the tv. “So that’s how they’re going to play it.”

“I need to call my mom,” Lorena says quietly behind him, still clad in the bathrobe. He didn’t realize she had gotten up. How much of the news broadcast had she heard?

“You can’t tell her where you are,” he said as he pulled the burner phone from his pocket. “You can’t give her too many details, not until we know what’s going on. You could put her in danger.”

“I know,” she assures him, her voice flat.

Lorena took the phone and headed back into the bedroom. 

“How you holding up?” Stiv asked, offering him a protein bar.

Even though he wasn’t hungry, he took it because he knew he had to eat. He had to keep up his strength. If it was just him, he might not care, damn himself to hell, but there was Lorena to think about. She watched their daughter die and…

A few weeks after Iris was born he found Lorena sitting against the wall in Iris’ room, covered in baby powder, staring into the void. A package of diapers had seemingly exploded. Iris was crying in her crib. 

First he took care of Iris, got her changed and settled down. Then he went and sat by Lorena. He didn’t speak, just sat with her to let her know he was there for her. 

“I can disassemble a claymore under combat conditions,” she choked out, water beginning to stream down her face. “It shouldn’t be this hard.”

He took her hand gently. “Let’s make you an appointment with the therapist.”

She looked at him like she had failed him.

“You aren’t a failure, you just need a little help,” he assured her. “And like they say on airplanes, take care of yourself first. I’ve got Iris.” She was going to argue so he cut her off. “We’re a team, remember? We solve these things together.”

Lorena had been reluctant, feeling like a failure of a mother, and a wife, regardless of what he said. But six months later she was, well, he wouldn’t say cured, but she was asymptomatic at least. She no longer panicked or found herself frozen in anxiety. Any small mistakes didn’t appear as giant stones pressing down on her. And if she started to feel that creeping darkness, she had a support group of other mothers who knew exactly what she had gone through, what she was feeling.

Post-partum depression they called it…

If Flynn felt like a failure for not protecting Iris, then he couldn’t imagine how much worse it was for Lorena. He needed to help her get through this. He couldn’t fail her like he did their daughter.

“I’ll be better once I know who did this. Those men were professionals.” Flynn nearly growled, pointing at the black mirror of the television. “That kind of cover up takes money and influence.”

“I agree.” Stiv picked up a courier bag he brought with him, pulling out some files. “This is everything you’ve worked on in the past two weeks. If we find nothing there, we look deeper.”

They delved into the research, finding focus in the hunt for his daughter’s murderers. He would check on Lorena once an hour. She had fallen asleep again after talking to her mother. If she didn’t wake up by early evening, he’d have to wake her so he could get some food into her.

It took a few hours, and help from a hacker friend who didn’t believe for a second Flynn did the things the news was saying, and they finally figured it out.

“Rittenhouse,” Flynn uttered the word like he would strangle it with his bare hands if he could.

“If what we’re seeing is true,” Stiv gestured to paperwork in front of him, “then Rittenhouse’s influence is vast and deep. They literally made documents disappear off the NSA servers.”

“We’re not safe here.” Flynn realized. 

“I know someone doing a supply run,” Stiv said after a moment of thought. “I can get you on a plane out of the country, no questions asked. Leaves tonight.”

“Where’s it going?”

“Brasil.” 

They got to the airfield without issue. Flynn was constantly checking every angle, making sure they weren’t being followed or heading into an ambush. He was starting to border on hypervigilance, being suspicious of every little thing. But he swallowed his feelings down. He trusted Stiv with his life.

Hours later, it was early morning and they were checking into a no-tell-motel in São Paulo. 

Lorena said she was tired from the flight which had been in the cargo hold of a transport plane. She crawled onto the bed and passed out. Some might ask how a person could sleep after what happened. The answer was simple, it’s the closest to death you can get without actually dying. 

They got settled in, bought clothes and supplies, and then Flynn went to work. He kept in contact with Stiv and others who believed in him. The first few days saw a wealth of information pour in, but then that was it. Anything actually useful, like names of Rittenhouse members, were behind walls that were either too high to scale, or too dangerous. 

He wasn’t going to let anyone else’s family get murdered.

Something of a routine developed as the days wore thin. Lorena spent most of her time either sitting quietly in a pew at Igreja Nossa Senhora do Brasil, or asleep. She would answer if he asked her a question. Eat if he reminded her that she needed to. Only take a shower if she wanted to cry. But otherwise, if she could go to sleep and never wake up… he was afraid she would do so.

He sometimes worried about leaving her alone, but she was far to Catholic to actively take her own life. It was a small thing to be thankful for, but at least he had that.

As for himself, the things he saw when he closed his eyes meant he only slept when exhaustion forced him to. Otherwise he sat in the chair, pouring over what information he had, hoping that maybe the fiftieth time he read it, something new would appear. It never did. 

His ability to be the strong one slowly drained from him. Every time Lorena woke up and there was that split second before she realized the nightmare was real, a little something more died inside the both of them. 

God, he would do anything to hear her hum one of those stupid Bing Crosby songs again…

On the morning of Christmas Eve, Flynn woke up with his head on the rickety table in their cheap room, papers plastered to his face. Lorena was sitting across from him, passed out, slumped in her chair. The night before was a bit of a blur thanks to the alcohol, but the details didn’t matter. They knew what day it was today, they knew about the presents hidden in their closet for Iris. About how putting her to bed on Christmas Eve would have been akin to planning the Invasion of Normandy. 

Vodka, whiskey, and some tequila for good measure.

Flynn had never seen Lorena reach her limit when it came to alcohol. The woman could drink him under the table thanks to her Russian heritage. It was one of the things he loved about her. But either she drank that much, or she didn’t have the strength to fight off the effects…

“Come on,” he said softly as he picked her up out of the chair and placed her on the bed. She mumbled something and curled onto her side. After making sure she was safe from either alcohol poisoning or choking on her own vomit, he left. 

The local bar was used to him now. They didn’t care that he came in, gun holstered behind his back. He was hardly the only one. And his money was good. That’s all that mattered to them. 

Early afternoon on Christmas Eve meant that the bar was fairly empty. He could be assured to be left alone to drown out the pain with shot after shot of vodka. He poured his third glass, stared into the liquid, and considered his options.

He was at a standstill with no idea where to go. The police were keeping to the story that Flynn had murdered his family. He was on every watchlist there was. Lorena’s mother agreed to keep quiet that she was alive. This way, whoever was after them might just be after _him_.

Iris’ funeral had been another one of those blurred out days only remembered by the empty bottles of liquor scattered about their room.

They couldn’t keep living like this. Lorena was fading away and he was drowning in whiskey. But if this Rittenhouse was as big and involved as they suspected, then he couldn’t show his face again. He wouldn’t even last long enough to go to trial. He’d end up dead before then. 

He should be dead right now. It should have been him. He was the one who found the connection between Rittenhouse and Mason Industries. If they wanted to silence him, they should have murdered _him_. Not his little girl. Not his little flower… 

There was an option that was looking more and more like his only option. If he let them find him, let them take him out, then perhaps Lorena could go home, to her mother. If she towed the line, then they might leave her alone, let her move on with her life… or at least get the chance to. God knows he wouldn’t be able to, not after this. 

Rittenhouse would probably torture him though. It would be a painful ending. Maybe he should just eat a bullet where he knows he’ll be found and reported. Case closed.

Lorena would tell him that’s a one-way-ticket to hell. He was pretty sure he punched that ticket when he failed to protect his family.

Flynn noticed when the woman walked in. His instincts as a soldier and a spy weren’t going to go away just because he really didn’t care if he lived or die. It only meant he’d see the blow coming.

She sat down next to him, which wasn’t the first clue she was there for him, but it made it pretty clear seeing as he was the only person at the bar. He glanced over and sized her up as she laid a worn, brown journal down in front of her. Not a solider, not a spy, but someone who has obviously seen some shit in her lifetime. If she wasn’t an agency woman, then she could be Rittenhouse. 

Does he capture her for information, or let her kill him and get it over with?

“Garcia Flynn,” she says the name like she’s intimately familiar with it. 

“Just get it over with,” he tells her harshly. He was in no mood to play cloak and dagger with an amateur.

“I’m not Rittenhouse,” she tells him softly. “I’m not from any agency.” 

He turns his head to get a good look at her. Long brown hair, a soft face that is yet somehow stern, and her eyes… they know him, but he doesn’t know them. “Then why are you here?”

“I’m here for you.”

Every instinct he has tells him to believe her. He couldn’t understand why, but clearly his subconscious was seeing things that he couldn’t. “Who are you?”

“I’m Lucy,” she says simply, almost smiles. “I know you didn’t kill your family. I know that Rittenhouse ordered the hit because you found a connection between them and Mason Industries.”

Instincts be damned, he still required answers. “And just how do you know this?

“You told me.” Lucy takes a breath. “A few years from now.”

It’s just so incredible it couldn’t be true. He read it on a report but figured it was code or hyperbole. There was no way… it was impossible. “Mason built a time machine.”

“He did, yes, and you’re going to steal it.” 

Future tense. He was _going_ to steal it. Which means… “Iris!”

“I’m sorry,” Lucy says sadly, her regret genuine. “You don’t save them, not yet. Which is why I came back. We’re going to try again.”

There was so much for him to unpack in those words. _They_ were going to try _again_. She was from the future. And he didn’t save… _them_?

Flynn opens his mouth to ask what she means but she grips her head in pain. He grabs her shoulders to hold her up and she doesn’t even flinch at his touch like a stranger might do. Who is this woman and how does she know him?

“I need to get going,” she says as she shakes off the pain. “There is only so much time you can spend on your own timeline before…”

“I have so many questions,” he tells her as the list of them keeps growing.

“Here.” Lucy pushes the journal towards him. “This will be your guide. And when we meet again, I won’t know you. I’ll be afraid of you. I won’t understand. You need to make me understand.”

He takes the journal. “Understand what?”

“That you and I make quite the team.” A smile graces the edges of her mouth. Then she leans forward and kisses him on his stubbled cheek. It’s the first time anyone has touched him, in any way, in the past three weeks. Since Lorena cried in his arms in the shower. He hadn’t really thought about it until that moment.

She’s rushing out of the bar before he can even think to form words. All he is left with is the worn journal. He opens it up and… holy shit… names. Rittenhouse members, what they have done. But it’s all in the past. That could only help him if… if he had a time machine.

Tossing money on the bar, he grabs the bottle of vodka and has to keep himself from bolting out the door. He makes it to the motel room, expecting to see Lorena still asleep. She’s laying on the bed, but talking on the burner phone, holding back tears. 

Knowing she is talking to her mother, and not wanting to interrupt her just yet, he clears off the table and lays the journal open. He starts to read, from the beginning. It talks about how Mason was in a financial bind, but this mysterious group named Rittenhouse came to his aid. Mason, along with another man, Anthony Bruhl, built a protype time machine and it works. 

At the beginning of 2015, they will start building a bigger, better time machine called The Mothership.

“What’s that?” Lorena asks as she comes to sit at the table across from him.

“This is going to sound crazy,” he tells her, bracing himself because even he can’t believe he’s about to say it. “That report we found, about bends in space, or whatever, it wasn’t double speak. Mason really did build a time machine.”

She tilts her head, like she’s trying to decide if he’s playing a joke, and what a horrible joke it would be. “How do you know…?”

“I was approached by a woman at the bar,” he explained, holding up the journal. “She gave me this. She was from the future. She knew everything that happened.”

“And you’re sure she’s from the future?” Lorena’s eyes gained focused. She was a structural engineer, had a very analytical mind. He could see her trying to work out the logistics.

“I can’t explain how… but yes.” It was the only answer he could give. “This woman _knew_ me, I could feel it. We were friends, or, will be.”

“Okay,” she says absently, still working the math out in her head. Then her eyes snap up. “That means Iris… we can go back and save Iris.”

Oh god, there was so much hope suddenly in her eyes that he wished he could lie. “We haven’t, yet. That’s why she came back. Why she gave me this. To try again.”

“Try again?” Lorena was confused, teetering on angry. “It was only days ago. Why didn’t she go back and warn us, stop what happened?”

“I don’t know,” he admits and it grates on him that he doesn’t have an answer. “She said something about not being able to spend much time on your own timeline.”

“How long does it take to make a phone call?” she nearly yells. 

He’d been waiting, hoping, to see signs of life coming back to Lorena. He supposed fury was a good a start as any. 

Lorena was as frustrated with herself as she was with the situation. He gives her a second to take deep breaths and calm down. She was using the tricks she had learned in her group therapy sessions. He hadn’t seen her use them in… years, now that he thinks about it.

“So,” she says as she after she takes a long, slow breath. “What’s all this.” She gestures to the journal.

“It seems to be, well, a lot of things,” he answers as he flips back to the front. “I’ve only read a few pages, but it’s everything from lists of historical events that Rittenhouse caused or benefited from, to actual personal accounts, but for a future that hasn’t happened yet.”

“Does it tell us who the Rittenhouse leadership is?” Lorena asks. “Where their headquarters are?”

“I…” he stumbles. “I didn’t see it, but I haven’t read all of it yet.”

Frustration grows in her again. “She has a time machine, she comes back here to tell you about it, so you can stop Rittenhouse, but she gives you her, what, personal journal, instead of a detailed dossier?”

“She’s a civilian…” Flynn gives a helpless shrug.

Lorena slumped back in her chair, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. “Well, something is better than nothing. We know that Mason has a time machine. Seems like a good place to start.”

He held up the journal. “Let’s go through this, see what we can find.”

First they would do a quick scan, getting a general idea of what all was there. Making notes of names and places that seemed important. Marking passages to go over more thoroughly. He read while Lorena jotted down information and did research.

“She mentioned Stanford, right?” Lorena asked, taking the laptop and turning it around so he could see. “Is one of these her?”

Lucy had commented on her frustrations, on her mother and their legacy. There was apparently only a handful of Lucy’s on staff at Stanford. It wasn’t hard for him to pick her out. “Lucy Preston. That’s her. Though the one I met was older, maybe five to ten years.”

“Says she’s a history professor,” Lorena turned the laptop back to her. “You think she could leave us better notes.”

Flynn had no reply to that. Lorena had been so quiet and sluggish, detached, that he was just happy to see her energized. They had a goal… they had hope. They could change history and save their daughter.

“I found Master Sergeant Wyatt Logan,” she tells him a few minutes later. “Freaking Delta Force. I might be able to forgive a civilian, but he should know better. Who sends incomplete intelligence on a mission so vital?”

“Maybe he doesn’t make it to the end of the book?” Flynn suggested. They had barely cracked the spine. 

“Well, it says here that his wife died in 2012.” Lorena was reading from the screen. “He… what the fuck. He left his wife on the side of the road, at night. Who… who does that?”

Suddenly what Flynn was reading made sense. “Lorena.”

“Yeah?”

He licked his lips as he tried to land on his words. “I don’t know how to say this, so I just will, but… you died.” 

“I what?” She almost laughed, a nervous kind of laugh.

“In whatever timeline Lucy came from… you died, with Iris.” The thought made him sick to his stomach. It was hard enough to lose Iris, hell, it was his worst nightmare to lose his daughter. But if he had lost them both… and been blamed for it like he was now… what would there be left for him?

Lorena’s hand goes to her side, over the freshly healed wound that would leave a nasty scar. Her words stumble out of her mouth. “The difference an inch makes…”

But how did it happen? What could he, or Lucy, have done in the past to make the bullet go one inch to right? Was it a different shooter than before because they took out the original one? Or was it just random chance that either Lorena moved quickly enough out of the way or the man didn’t bother to aim better?

“This is good,” Lorena suddenly said, nodding her head. “Already the past has changed. I’m alive. That means we can change it again. We can save Iris.”

Flynn agreed. Even if it was only happenstance that Lorena lived, it still meant that nothing was etched into stone. 

With renewed vigor, they delved back into the journal. Lorena looked up a Rufus Carlin and Jiya Marri, employees of Mason who were a part of the ‘good guys.’ There was a Homeland agent who was also on the team. The farther they got into the book, it felt like more than one person was writing it. Sure, it was the same handwriting, but expressions and intensity changed and morphed.

How many timelines had the journal gone through?

When he got to the entry regarding the _Titanic_, he paused. 

There had been comments, interesting word choices, that Flynn hadn’t been sure how to interpret. He didn’t mention them to Lorena because he thought he might have been imagining it. But no, there was no denying what happened, what _will_ happen, between him and Lucy Preston.

For a split second he considered hiding the truth from Lorena, shielding her in a way, but to do so… no, he couldn’t violate her trust like that. Their relationship was built on honesty.

Flynn can’t say the words out loud because they’re stuck in his throat. He gives Lorena the journal and she can tell she needs to brace herself for whatever she is about to read. He watches as her eyes scan down the page, notes the changes in her expression. Or, more accurately, the loss of expression, her face going blank, emotionless.

She sets the journal down and doesn’t say a word.

“Lorena—”

“Don’t,” she stops him. He can’t tell if she’s angry, or sad, or... “I was dead, what, six years by then? The heart grieves and then it moves on. And I’d want you to… move on… be happy.”

Flynn reaches forward to take her hand, but she pulls it back. She tries to cover, pretending that she meant to reach towards the laptop to close it. He can see her retreating again and he doesn’t know what to do. He starts to get up so he can move to her, hug her, promise her that he loves her, he will _always_ love her, but again she recoils, standing up and moving away.

“I wanted to attend evening mass,” she tells him, and it technically was the truth. “I should go if I want a good seat.”

“Lorena, I love you.”

“I know,” she tries to smile but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “The journal was clearly just meant for you. So, uh, keep reading and, ah… let me know what you need me to do, to save Iris.” She grabs her phone and a few other things, quickly exiting the room. 

Flynn sags back into the chair. How does one apologize for an affair that isn’t actually an affair, and doesn’t take place for another six years?

Well, there was no going back, he could only push forward. His daughter’s life depended on it. He picked up the journal and kept reading. 

Details of his relationship with Lucy were sparse, tucked in around mission notes and philosophical questions. But with this new light, he could see it. He could see how he would fall in love with Lucy Preston. 

Smart, capable, determined… and beautiful. 

Lorena was gone in that other future, and even though he had hope he could save her, and Iris, he wasn’t going to go back to them. What does he tell Lucy? After everything he had done, how could he bring that darkness into their lives? It… it sounded exactly like something he would say. 

But Lorena didn’t die this time. He would have her by his side, fighting Rittenhouse, to save their daughter.

Would that be enough?

They say that most marriages never survive the death of a child. 

And while he undoubtably knows they will never stop loving each other… could they ever get back to how it was before? Could they ever touch each other again and not have it accompanied by searing pain? Reminders of what they created together, and what they lost together.

It was a question he wasn’t going to be able to answer today.

The night wore on as he kept reading. Apparently his relationship with Lucy would fall apart because of this Wyatt yahoo. Of course he’d tell Lorena this, but it didn’t matter. Lucy’s heart might belong to another, it doesn’t change the fact his moved on. That by being around this woman, working with her, he fell in love. 

Even with the forewarning that it wouldn’t work out, could he stop himself from doing it again?

It got late, really late, well past the time mass ended. He knew Lorena could take care of herself, that she wouldn’t hurt herself, but so many things could go wrong. He was about to go out looking for her when she came back. 

“Sorry,” she apologized when she saw the worried look on his face. “I was talking to God, lost track of time.”

Flynn, well, he wasn’t really a devout believer, nor was he an atheist. He’d seen too much in the wars that supported either argument. From miracles to travesty. But Lorena, even though she had been to war herself, she had never lost her faith. 

“What did they have to say?” he asked softly, making it clear she didn’t have to answer if she didn’t want to.

“They said…” she paused so she could find her words. “They said that this, all of this, is Rittenhouse’s fault. _They_ did this. They murdered our daughter. They have murdered so many others. And now they want a time machine… so that they can play god.”

“They need to be stopped,” he quietly agreed.

“Yes, yes they do.” Something hardened in her. “Whatever it takes, they must be stopped. And that’s why God sent an archangel against them… and gave him a time machine.”

Flynn was the archangel, perhaps he should have been the one named Gabriel. 

“Lorena…” He wants to reach out for her but he’s not sure if it would be welcomed.

She simply shrugs. “Whatever it takes.”

Whatever it takes to do it, and whatever it takes from them. 

Be it a mile… or an inch.


End file.
